electronic frontier foundation

Eff, yeah, freedom! The Patriot Act has expired. Downside is that most likely, we only have a day or two before the Senate will reinstate some elements of the data-collection act. [Electronic Frontier Foundation]

Artists in Hungary protest the government’s appointment of right-leaning cultural officials by holding an anti-government biennial, the Off Biennale Budapest. [The Art Newspaper]

Last week marked the 22nd anniversary of Super Mario Bros., the movie featuring John Leguizamo, Bob Hoskins, and Dennis Hopper. While this isn’t at all newsworthy unto itself, it’s a good excuse to ask the question: How the hell did the screenwriters/production designers squeeze THAT plot and insanely complete vision of an alternate reality out of a dumb video game? Seriously… from the costumes to details like a bumper-car-overhead-grid powering city traffic, that film was gloriously trippy as hell and had almost nothing to do with the Nintendo game. It was a huge flop at the box office and wildly unpopular with the franchise’s fans. But rewatch it as an adult. Trust us. It’s like if John Waters made a mashup of Blade Runner and Dune for children…with dinosaurs. [WTVY]

Surprise! Yet another super-tall, super-luxury megatower is coming to the southern end of Central Park. The historic Helmsley Park Lane Hotel failed to win landmark status, so now it’s being demolished to make way for a 1,210 foot condo tower that no one will probably live in. [New York YIMBY]

In related skyline-changing news, the massive, controversial One Vanderbilt office building has been approved near Grand Central. At 1,501 feet, it will dwarf even the new WTC, which technically has a parapet of “only” 1,368 feet. [The New York Times]

Every Memorial Day weekend, thousands of music fans—from train-hopping crust punks to pond-hopping Black Metal fans from Scandinavia—descend on Baltimore for Maryland Deathfest, the largest “extreme music” festival in North America. This year, Brooklyn-based photographer Adel Souto documented the 100 best back patches at the festival. Many of them are better than most of the art we’ve seen in galleries recently. [No Echo]

Jasper Johns’s nonprofit has opened an exhibition space near the new Whitney dedicated exclusively to artist-curated shows. [artnet News]

It turns out that Marilyn Mosby, prosecutor in the trial of the police officers who killed Freddie Gray, was once a plaintiff on Judge Judy. Don’t worry, she won. [CBS Baltimore]

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t the first time Baltimore has seen local celebrities take the stand in front of the Honorable Judith Sheindlin. [The Village Voice]

Is there anything creepier than the notion that the song “Gloomy Sunday” set off a wave of suicides in post-WW1 Budapest? Yes. The “Smile Clubs” that were started to combat the epidemic are much, much creepier. Warning: the accompanying photos of taped-in-place smiles will likely haunt you for eternity. [io9]